Archive for 2011

Harris Psomiadis, founder of the Center for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies at Queens College and its director for 30 years, is remembered as “a visionary and a pioneer in Greek studies” by assistant director Effie Lekas. Professor Psomiadis built “the largest center for Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies outside of Greece right here at Queens College” and also was “a great teacher…. brilliant but humble,” Lekas said. Psomiadis died of cancer Aug. 13 at age 82.

World-renowned geologist Gerald M. Friedman, who retired in 2004 as a Distinguished Professor at Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, died Nov. 29 at age 90. Before coming to CUNY in 1984, he taught for 20 years at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), worked in the oil industry and came to be viewed as one of the founders of the modern study of sedimentary rock.

Patrick V. Murphy, the son of a New York City policeman who rose to lead the Police Department in the early 1970s, steering it through one of its rockiest periods as he instituted reforms to root out corruption in the ranks, died Friday at a North Carolina hospital. He was 91 and lived in Wilmington, N.C.

Evelyn H. Lauder, a refugee of Nazi-occupied Europe who married into an illustrious family in the beauty business and became an ardent advocate for breast cancer awareness, raising millions for research, died on Saturday at her home in Manhattan. She was 75.

Former colleagues of the late Laurence Wilson, longtime music director and chairman of the Music and Art Department at Borough of Manhattan Community College, extol him as a consummate musician, outstanding educator, innovative administrator and beloved friend who shared his talent with audiences worldwide and his knowledge and support with students and associates.

Franklin E. Kameny, who transformed his 1957 arrest as a “sexual pervert” and his subsequent firing from the Army Map Service into a powerful animating spark of the gay civil rights movement, died on Tuesday at his home in Washington. He was 86.

Oscar Handlin, a Harvard professor whose classic writings on American immigration made him a leading intellectual force behind legislation that eliminated the immigration quota system in the United States, died Sept. 20 at his home in Cambridge, Mass., after a heart attack. He was 95.